Processed with Photivo Basically it’s an image processing assembly line. You set the parameters, throw your RAW file in on top, wait for a moment and catch your image when it falls out of the machine. Today I give it a try and rescue an image of a kite with it. It’s an impressive tool with a quite unique but understandable user interface. I’ll explore this further, perhaps it will enter my work...

The human skin isn’t as smooth and even as it used to be. At least if you are older than 12 or so. One way to keep up the illusion of eternal youth is image manipulation. Today I explore one way to smooth skin and keep it looking natural. That’s the problem with overly done make up and postprocessing – if you overdo it, faces look like made out of plastic. There is a difference in size between ...

There was a question left open in the last show: How to create a random pattern of particles that follow a gradient in density. I got three answers. One from Benton – just use a brush with absurdly high jitter. Then I got the help that I asked for from Philippe and finally thought about a way myself. I started with Philippe’s tutorial for making a starfield. The TOC Sorry, not here up to now.

I go through the whole image processing with cropping and changing the colours in several layers. Nothing new technically, but the basics about layer masks explained again. The TOC 00:20 Hi! And some comments about the state of this project. 03:25 Cropping inside out 07:50 Automatic white balance 08:40 Adding a layer group 09:50 Curves to make weird colours 11:25 A second layer for colour adjus...

This time we are off into space, but still sitting in front of the monitor. I take X-Ray data from the Chandra Satellite and make a false colour image out of them. All I needed to know for that (and much much more) is on their album page. The files I have used and the tutorial I was inspired by are also on the Chandra website. While I was editing this show I thought about some different ways to...

I am doing some homework for school this time. Getting a balloon up into the air and making air molecules visible. All with GIMP. We have a new interactive white board at school. And I try to make a series of images of a balloon for a physics lesson. I am using layers, paths, selections and more – a lot of stuff for some simple drawings. Philippe could have done this better, I fear. The TOC 01:...

This episode is mostly about Linux and competition. We look at our challenge and the winning image and we have a look at the challenge at gimpusers.com. There you have to design a new splash screen for GIMP. I mention Linux Outlaws who ranted about Ubuntu and were quite right on the points I would make too. I tried PCLinuxOS, liked it and am now trying Debian Squeeze, the old fashioned Linux Di...

Just a short (it’s grading hell….) episode about the little icons in your browser window and the bookmarks. It was a Microsoft™ invention (yes, they invented something ) and so the most compatible file format is the Windows™ icon .ico file. The TOC 00:40 Favicons 01:50 Getting a favicon file into GIMP 02:45 Image properties dialogue 04:20 Adding transparency 05:02 Looking at the work of others ...

In March I got some images from Peter in Thailand. He lives there in a country full of photogenic sites and has often only the time to take a quick shot with his P&S camera without being able to work around some of the obstacles. Specially for the show he made some with the typical problems. In this case it is to much light – or better, too much dynamic range. The difference between tropica...

Again a trip to Thailand with a wonderful candid shot made by Peter at a school festival. There is not much to enhance, just a crop, a bit of curves and the mutation of a blue trash bag into a gray one. Before that I talk about bracketing and “dedicated” vs. “drive by” photography. And I present the next addition to our poor webserver – a Wiki for the collected wisdom of you all. Link sits in t...